1. Field of the Invention
This invention generally relates to home-network telephony and, more particularly, to a system and method for virtual multiline telephony for a home-network endpoint connecting to a gateway through a single channel.
2. Description of the Related Art
Service providers are rolling out multiline, broadband telephony services using, for example, DSL, cable modem, or fixed-wireless broadband access, to carry more than one line of voice data. As such, these carriers desire to deploy telephones that have multiline broadband telephony support in residential, small office home office (SOHO) and small and medium enterprises (SME) environments that subscribe to these broadband telephony services.
In current multiline integrated services digital network (ISDN) or plain old telephone service (POTS) telephones, all of the available external telephone lines terminate at the telephone itself. This allows for easy switching between lines, line selection, indications of line status, control of line-hold and multiparty conferencing capabilities. The majority of current POTS multiline telephones limit the number of lines supported to two, since typical residential POTS wiring comprises two pairs and can readily support up to two lines, but no more. In current multiline telephones, although all the supported lines terminate at the multiline phone itself, typically only one voice stream is active in a telephone call at any given time, since the multiline phone typically has only one mouthpiece and earpiece.
Home-network telephony systems are emerging that support multiple internally connected home-network telephony devices such as telephones, Fax machines, and multi-functional peripherals (MFPS). Typically, such home-network telephone devices share a digital home-network transmission media, such as a standard phoneline, an AC powerline, dedicated hardwires (such as Ethernet), or a wireless channel. Telephony adapters exist that allow a legacy analog phone to plug into and use digital home-network telephony. Likewise, integrated telephony devices are emerging that directly incorporate the digital home-network telephony interface.
However, conventional home-network telephony devices and adapters support only one audio path (channel) across the home-network. This limitation is highly desirable in order to maintain a low cost for such devices. However, conventional multiline telephony systems require all telephone lines, available at an endpoint, to be physically terminated at that endpoint, and support multiple simultaneous audio paths (one per telephone line) to the multiline endpoint.
It would be advantageous if calls to a home-network telephone system could enable home-network telephony endpoints to support multiline services while only requiring a single audio path to the endpoint, in order to maintain a low cost.
It would be advantageous if a home-network telephone system could readily supply multiline service to the home-network endpoints across a single, shared communication channel. Further, it would be advantageous if such a system could readily support more than two telephone lines.